Concerning racial/religious profiling in the search for terrorists...

Great Debates
1

First of all, I realize this is a very touchy subject, and am cautious in starting this thread.

On CNN yesterday, and in various other snippets in news sources, I hear claims that the US government is using racial/religious profiling to determine who will be picked up and questioned in attempts to find/disrupt terrorist cells and plans for terrorism. While I am against racial/religious profiling in pretty much any case, and against using racial/religious profiling solely as a basis for picking people up to question them, in this particular case I am torn.

For example, the US is engaged in military conflict with an extremist Islamic terrorist group. Said terrorist group is believed (known?) to have many sleeper agents/cells in the US. Human rights groups are accusing the US of targeting Moslems and people from heavily Islamic regions (I don’t have a cite in particular, and I’m kinda in a rush) in who they pick up for questioning…but that’s the catch, isn’t it? The people they’re looking for are Muslim, albeit of the extremist variety.

Is it really all that bad to use racial/religious profiling if combined with other methods to determine who should be picked up for questioning? After all, isn’t it rather unlikely that someone who isn’t Muslim would be an Al Quaida/other Islamic terrorist? I definitely see a lot of potential for severe abuse of such profiling, but is profiling (with some restraints/requirements, but I don’t know what those should be) necessary in this case?

There it is. Flame me, debate away, whatever…I’m just totally undecided on the issue.

(no, I don’t want to debate the alleged abuses of anybody picked up…different topic. I just want to focus on the profiling in this particular circumstance)

2

how are you going to “racially profile” a Bosnian Muslim? A Nigerian Muslim? An Indonesian?

Not all Muslim men are olive skinned, heavily bearded, and named “Achmed”. Profiling a Muslim is not much different than trying to profile a Catholic.

But obviously, people of “Middle Eastern” appearance are under extra scrutiny, even if they are Christian Armenians or Lebanese. Law enforcement uses profiling of all sorts all the time. It’s almost completely unavoidable, no matter how much people may be outraged by it when it seems to target particular groups.

3

I just wonder what all these “racial profiling isn’t that bad” folks are going to say once we find a few white-bread Anglo-lookin’ Caucasian terrorists. I’m actually rather surprised Tim McVeigh didn’t put these arguments to rest.